Reading Challenges

I signed up for a reading challenge just now, and used this as my commenting blog.  However, it is not the blog I am using for reviews and keeping track of bookish stuff.  For that, I am at http://lorriechipps.livejournal.com/ .  Comments, by the way, hate me.

Losing a friend and what’s left of my humanity

Oh, dear God (or Great Frying Pan in the Sky, for all I care – we all know no one is listening by this point, I should think), I am so freakishly busy.  It’s appalling.  Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines.  And when was the last time you got in touch with another physical human being?  Really.  Honestly now.  When did you talk to someone last?  Been a while, hasn’t it?  God, I hate deadlines. 

And it’s not like Arthur’s suicide is helping anything.  He worked with me, and he committed suicide two days ago when he heard about the GEAS.  The news took a while to get to him, since he’s one of those I-am-above-internet-news people, but then when it did he just left work, went home, and the next thing anyone knew from him his cleaning bot found him.  Dead.  I didn’t even know cleaning bots had protocol for calling the bosses of their dead owners.  And now the bosses are saying that the work still needs doing, needs it now, whether or not Arthur is dead.  Ergo, more work for me!

I know this all seems callous, but I don’t really know how to care anymore.  I worked next to him for four years, and I hardly knew him.  I know some people purely through internet whom I’ve never met face-to-face better than I knew Arthur, and I hate that.  I can’t mourn him.  I don’t know how.  But Arthur Ramsey was a good man, and he deserves better than a friend who doesn’t know him, who can’t mourn him.

And you know what the really sad part is?  I’m the closest person he’s got.  His parents are dead, he has no siblings, and no extended family.  So I am charged with collecting his things and arranging the funeral.  And I don’t even know him.

Hello, all!

Warning: this blog will be updated sporadically as time permits.  I will update it as often as I have time and something to say. 

And to the point: as everyone knows by now, GEAS has released that new study giving the human race until 2042 – that’s only 23 years – until mass extinction.  Given our recent population growth, the new data is certainly unexpected, but look at the red squirrels.  GEAS was dead on with that one – literally.  We need to do something, and we need to start now, or we’ll end up following them into extinction.  Personally, I worry most about the superthreats the GEAS has named “Ravenous” and “Generation Exile.”  I have known about the water shortage and the hot stains since almost the beginning – around 2008 or so, I think it was.  It didn’t seem like much then, did it?  If only it could have stayed that way – a distant possiblity several generations down the line, no more. 

I used to live in San Diego, which was a dry semi-desert when I left it.  I don’t know what it looks like now; I haven’t been following their news like I should, and with me going back in two weeks!  I just hope it’s not too bad – I know a lot of people moved out when the last drought started and just didn’t end, and then of course there was that earthquake that broke water mains all over the city.  I got depressed when I started reading about that, and after I didn’t look again.  I’ll be going back two weeks from now; look for my news then.  I’ll try by best to get this updated.